The Mad Hatter
by Myannah
Summary: Brody discovers that a few of the hackers on their top twenty most wanted list is all one person, known as The Mad Hatter. This helps them narrow down their search and end up chasing another ghost. When The Mad Hatter messes up, the hacker helps them solve another case.
1. Chapter 1

The Mad Hatter

Chapter 1

Brody Nelson drew the short straw. He had to sit with the interns, doing boring paperwork after hours. At least the interns were entertaining. They were very nervous and skittish around him and he had no idea why, but they did make a lot of mistakes and stumbled around the place.

When one of the interns stumbled right into Nelson's chair, quickly apologized and ran off, he realized something was strange. Nelson stared after the poor kid as if the answer would be written on his back.

"There's a rumor that you're very ill tempered." A voice said from another desk.

"Really?" Nelson asked and looked up at the young woman with porcelain skin and black pigtails.

"Apparently you break things, like fingers and faces." She added with a smile, showing that she found it ridiculous.

"And you aren't scared?" Nelson asked.

"Please." She giggled and shook her head.

"What's your name?"

"Alma Brooke."

"Alma? Well, I don't know whether I should be offended or relieved that you aren't scared of me."

"You might want to try: proud, since one of the FBI interns actually did enough research to know that you're not a hothead."

"Oh. Yeah. Good."

Another intern quickly walked in carrying a coffee cup. She placed it on Alma's table, glanced at Nelson and whispered something to Alma.

"Thank you." Alma said as the intern rushed off.

"You got the other interns to fetch you coffee?" Nelson was impressed.

"They're a little scared of me too. I'm of Russian decent. I actually do break fingers and faces." She stood from her chair and grabbed her coffee mug.

"And make them sleep with the fishes?" Nelson asked with an accent. Alma smiled.

She picked up a few folders and handed them to Nelson.

"I've been reading through those today. Not sure where to file them. But they are very interesting. Have you read them?"

Nelson looked at the writing on the file binders. They were marked according to the names of the top ten most wanted Cyber criminals.

"You read through all of these?" Nelson asked as he looked at the pile. It wasn't a big pile, but would take a while to get through. Some folders didn't have a lot of info. Just the basics that they knew, but some had official investigation notes and pictures.

"Have you read them?" she asked, curiosity clear on her face.

"I've scanned them." He said as he gently flipped through a few.

"You should read them. Like, really read them. Altogether. Might give you a new perspective." Alma said as she turned towards the door.

"Hey, Alma." He called her just before she reached the door and she stopped and turned to look at him. "You started the rumor, didn't you?"

She grinned, tapped her nose and walked out.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Brody took the pile of files home to read through. It was after all the only time he had free. He searched his house for sticky notes and found a short stack that he had forgotten about in his utensils drawer. He stuck green sticky notes all over the top ten most wanted files and noted down a few thoughts.

When he was done, he paged through them again and added a few more notes. He took four files out of their perfect order and placed them on top of the whole pile before going to bed at three am.

Avery Ryan was already on her second cup of coffee as she looked through a few bulletins on the crime report. Brody knocked a few times before he walked in with the pile of files.

"Hey, Avery. Can we talk?" he asked

"Something wrong, Brody?" she asked him without looking up at him. Something in his voice just tipped her off that he had a major concern.

"No. Not really. I just found something interesting in the top ten files."

Avery finally looked up when he placed the files on her table. He removed the four files that he had taken out of order and held them up for her to see.

"These four criminals are all one person." Brody said and then handed her the files.

"He is known as The Mad Hatter. No one likes him. He goes by a lot of different aliases. And changes it faster than the mad hatter changes seats in Alice in Wonderland."

"Hence the name." Avery caught on and paged through the files.

"He's also done a few other thing that you don't have on file. Mostly because it was a counter hack, but it was big."

"Counter hack?" Avery frowned.

"Some of the guys in the deep web talked about a big bank hack. There was a team that was going to take down a Bank of America. They called it the dragon vault plan. At that time, The Mad Hatter was under the name: Twisted, and joined the team. But as they went about the plan, Twisted turned the tables and worked against them, building the bank's firewalls, counter hacking them, throwing them with viruses and actually exposed them to the police. Three of the five guys got arrested. After that they really started calling him The Mad Hatter. He's already revealed a whole lot of them and made a few go into hiding. He was responsible for the Prison lockdown in California. And he was the person who stole one cent per transaction on any visa card worldwide. Became a billionaire overnight and no one caught on until an intern pointed it out at VISA. And then the money was nowhere to be found."

"How do you know it's all The Mad Hatter?" Avery asked. She didn't know about the VISA hack and was actually impressed.

"The only signature I ever noticed was a %-) sign in his code." Brody pointed to a post it that had it written on.

"What emoji is that?" Avery wondered.

"It isn't one. Just to be clear, he doesn't call himself the mad hatter. Everyone in the deep web does. He skips between the white hat and black hat line as if it's a children's game."

"Technically he's never really done any major damage. One patient died because of a virus that Midnight angel installed in Special care unit. But we think that is just a trial run."

"Midnight Angel is The Mad Hatter and he never intended to kill someone. Or so he said. The intention of the hack was to expose a doctor who was prescribing himself a few drugs. And not long after that, Midnight Angel disappeared."

"He said so himself? You know him?"

"No not personally. After that patient died, he left a really long message on the blackboard. That's where these guys chat anonymously. I remember the note because it sounded like a suicide note." Brody thought back to that day. He remembered it being particularly hot and he was sitting in his apartment in nothing but shorts. He even remembers laughing at the comments some people made about the note.

"Did he kill himself?"

"No. He was out for a while but then he made an appearance again. He hacked a cellphone company and gave a lot of people free airtime and data bundles. But then I got out of the deep web and I have no idea what he's been up to lately."

"How did you find this out?" Avery held up the files.

"An intern pointed it out to me. Alma Brooke."

"But why these files?" Avery was curious. It wasn't as if the top ten files were within reach. She would have had to go look them up to know where to find them.

"I was babysitting the interns. They were filing a bunch of paperwork." Brody suddenly wondered the same thing. The last time they closed a top ten case; he had to look long and hard to find it.

Avery quickly walked out the door and Brody followed. She walked towards the intern's workroom.

"Alma Brooke?" Avery called to them. They all looked around at each other but no one stood up.

"Hey you," Brody pointed to the intern who had brought Alma her coffee. "The girl with the black pigtails, you brought her coffee."

"That's Remmy." The intern said, suddenly very scared. "She isn't here today."

"Remmy?" Brody wondered why she had given him a false name. He raced to the closest computer he could find and search for the intern application forms.

"Remmy Hatter." He read and frowned. He looked through her file and stepped away when he saw it… written between her information was The Mad Hatter's signature.


End file.
